Michael Shermer

On July 16, 2013 on KPFA, Michio Kaku, "Professor of Theoretical Physics" and host of a long-standing radio show called "Exploration", gave a completely unscientific and unskeptical interview platform to Michael Shermer to discuss "The Borders of Science - Why People Believe Strange Things". Dr. Shermer is introduced as the "dean of debunkers", founder of The Skeptical Society, and a regular writer for Scientific American.

Dr Kaku lets Dr Shermer ridicule Dr Steven Jones without even mentioning a single detail of his work or his research on samples of WTC dust. What does our host do to challenge Shermer? Kaku has no informed questions for Shermer to debunk!

A couple of months ago I emailed Michael Shermer. To my surprise, he responded.
I wrote him as a "concerned citizen and parent" ( I'm not a parent, btw,) wondering what he would say to someone genuinely questioning the official 9/11 narrative.

Mr. Shermer,

A colleague referred me to this video clip of Dr. Niels Harrit, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. In this video he refers to a substance called "nanothermite."

"Conspiracy Theories" do not interest me. However, scientific evidence of an extremely high tech explosive in the lower Manhattan dust bothers me greatly.

Is there any validity to this claim?

***

No, Richard, no validity to the "microthermite" story whatsoever. None. No one found thermite or microthermite or superthermite or any other type of thermite at ground zero. And even if they did, thermite cannot do what they claim it can. This was all tested years ago.

Presented with 11 questions by world911truth.org, Shermer compares 9/11 skepticism and inquiry to holocaust denial and creationism, only addresses questions related to the WTC destructions, and in doing so, relies on Eager's claim of pancaking (debunked by NIST), and then reposts material from the Implosion World 'debunking', previously debunked by Jim Hoffman: http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/blanchard/index.html - loose nuke

Hey 9/11 Truthers, CNN is reporting that al Qaeda just took credit for the Northwest Airlines terrorist attack:

“Be prepared to suffer because the killing is coming and we prepared you men who love death just as you love life and by God’s permission, we will come to you with more things that you have never seen before. Because, as you kill, you will be killed and tomorrow is coming soon. The martyrdom brother was able to reach his objective with the grace of God but due to a technical fault, the full explosion did not take place.”

Pseudo-Skepticism is so important for people to understand because it is quite possibly the strongest force preventing 911 truth from breaking wide open (although what an amazing achievement for the movement to have made it this far in the face of such seemingly insurmountable odds). Pseudo-Skepticism is the greatest enemy of 911 truth and as the great Sun Tzu remarked in his classic book, "The Art of War,"
"Know Your Enemy"

There is also a bit of advice at the end of the article that could certainly apply to 911 truthers and how they should conduct themselves when debating "debunkers."

PS - Michael Shermer is perhaps the greatest example of a Pseudo-Skeptic and he has been at the forefront of 911 truth debunking.

Ever since Skeptic magazine published an investigative article on the 9/11 "Truth Movement" and analyzed their claims, which were found wanting, I have been hounded by the so-called 9/11 "truthers" because I am the editor of the magazine and therefore am suppose to be a "skeptic" of the official explanation for 9/11.

In fact, throughout January I have been on a book tour for The Mind of the Market, my book on behavioral economics and evolutionary economics, and at every event during the Q & A one of these "truthers" pretends to ask a question about economics but then quickly shifts to a rant about what "really happened" on September 11, 2001.

[The transcript below begins as Host Thom Hartmann is explaining some background relating to his research into the JFK assassination, about an hour an eight minutes into the unedited recording of the show at http://www.whiterosesociety.org/content/hartmann/HartmannShow-(8-11-2007).mp3 .]

TH: I’m very skeptical of anybody who says I know exactly what went on, or I know exactly what didn’t go on. So my position is very agnostic on this. I think it's going to take – I mean, here we are, with the JFK assassination, 40 years later, 44 years later – I think it's gonna take a long time to figure out. That said, a good healthy discussion, a good healthy debate and raising the questions and for that matter raising the answers to the questions, is a reasonable and healthy thing.

After working with my freeware Audacity wave editor (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows) all afternoon, I've managed to compile a relatively complete audio version of the debate (from hours 1 & 2) that is generally commercial-free.